Category: Hunting & Fishing

Headsplitting problem on the ice

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––Atlantic Canadian fishers
clubbed and/or shot their way toward a quota of 285,000 harp
seals and hooded seals this spring, the most in 15 years, because
they wrongly blame seals––who don’t eat much cod––for wiping
out overfished cod stocks. When the International Fund for
Animal Welfare produced videotape of illegally killed newborn
whitecoats on ice off Iles de la Madeleine, Quebec, the perpetrators
were quickly excused by DFO area manager Roger Simon.
“They’re technically white-looking seals,” Simon said.
“When the moulting process starts, the white fur is still there as
the new grey fur coming out is underneath. It’s no longer a whitecoat,
but it may appear white.”
The Canadian government used similar logic to reauthorize
the offshore seal hunt itself in late 1995, after a decade-long
suspension due to international protest. Throughout the 1980s,
governments both Liberal and Progressive Conservative traded
generous cod quotas for votes against scientific advice, until as
predicted the cod stock crashed. Forced to halt cod fishing indefinitely
in 1992, the Progressive Conservatives lost the next election––but
Liberal fisheries minister Brian Tobin turned the crisis
to his advantage by scapegoating seals. As he did, again contrary
to most scientific advice, he left the federal government to run
successfully for premier of Newfoundland.

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MORE NATIVES TO KILL GRAY WHALES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

PORT ALBERNI, B.C.––Economically stressed
by the collapse of the British Columbia salmon industry, and
openly funded in part by Japanese and Norwegian whalers,
the 14-nation Nuu-Chah-Nulth native confederacy
announced in mid-April that it intends to join the Makah tribe
of Neah Bay, Washington, in killing gray whales.
Like the Makah, who live across the Straits of San
Juan de Fuca, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth haven’t killed whales in
more than 70 years. Unlike the Makah, who have the support
of the Clinton/Gore administration in applying for an
aboriginal subsistence whaling quota from the International
Whaling Commission, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth don’t have to
fool with external politics. Since Canada doesn’t belong to
the IWC, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth need only get a permit to kill
whales for “food or social or ceremonial purposes” from the
Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Thus the Nuu-Chah-Nulth could start harpooning
even before the October IWC meeting, if any gray whales
are within target range.
As the Seattle Times explained, “The Nuu-ChahNulth
have been asserting their traditional whaling rights in
negotiations with the Canadian government over sovereignty
and fishing rights.”

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“They eat fish––kill ‘em!”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Sea lions had a rough fourth week of March:
In New Zealand, fisheries minister John Luxton
finally closed the Auckland Islands squid season on March
25, four days after he was advised that observed accidental
killings of endangered Hooker’s sea lions had reached 34.
Projected to the squid fleet as a whole, the indicated toll was
102, significantly more than the 73 sea lion deaths permitted
under the Fisheries Act.
In Peru, the Peruvian fisheries ministry announced
it was considering a “pilot program” to allow fishers to kill
up to 60 sea lions who allegedly tear nets, and export their
genitals to the Asian aphrodisiac market.

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King salmon close to ESA listing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SEATTLE––National Marine Fisheries Service biologists
reported on April 10 that the coveted chinook or king
salmon could qualify for Endangered Species Act
protection––four months after Canadian fisheries minister Fred
Mifflin pronounced chinook well enough recovered to reopen
sport fishing of the species off the west coast of Vancouver
Island, with a year-long limit of two per day.
The Puget Sound chinook count is down to 71,000,
NMFS said, from an estimated 690,000 in 1911. Wild-run chinook
account for under 25% of the current population. The rest
come from hatcheries.
Similar declines were reported in Oregon and northern
California rivers. But the Oregon and California coastal
populations were said to be still healthy.

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CAN FISH SURVIVE IN A PORK BARREL?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

RALEIGH, N.C.––Forced to choose between fish
and pigs, North Carolina wants both––and got state fisheries
director Bruce Freeman’s resignation on February 13 as a
slightly early Valentine to himself. For $83,000 a year, he
decided, the job wasn’t worth the pfiesteria headache.
Freeman, a North Carolina native who previously
served as New Jersey fisheries director, was North Carolina’s
sixth fisheries director in 15 years, only one of whom stayed
longer than two years. He took office just four months before
the June 1995 destruction of the Neuse River by 20 million gallons
of hog slurry from a ruptured farm lagoon. That alone
killed as many as 40 million fish––and that spill was followed
by more than 100 others, both on the Neuse and other rivers.
There were hints that similar smaller spills had occurred for
years, to little notice, as the North Carolina hog industry rapidly
expanded over the past decade with strong government influence
at both the state and federal levels.

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Cod’s walloped

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Like the North Sea nations and Canada, New
England is combatting a cod crisis. Since 1982, the New
England cod, yellowtail, and haddock catches, combined,
are down from 86,000 tons to 17,600 tons. After the New
England fleet killed 17% more cod from May through August
last year than the New England Fishery Management Council
set as the regional quota for the year, scientific advisors recommended
a 41% cut in the cod take to protect adequate
spawning stock. Initially proposing to cut the number of
allowable fishing days per vessel from an already restricted
88 to just 14, the council eventually settled on weight limits
for catches prorated by size of vessel. Earlier limits on fishing
days and an outright prohibition of fishing in certain areas
meanwhile won a February 5 court challenge from the
Associated Fisheries of Maine.

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BIG FISH EAT LITTLE FISH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The cynical might believe fisheries
negotiations are about who gets to kill the last
fish––after starving, bludgeoning, shooting,
or drowning marine mammals and sea birds to
extinction––on purpose if their remains can be
sold or they are considered competitors, by
accident if not.
Scientists repeatedly warn governments
and international rule-makers that as
former National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration science chief Sylvia Earle puts
it, “The ocean cannot sustain the massive
removal of wildlife needed to keep nations
supplied with the present levels of food taken
from the sea.”
Caught between the bedeviling verity
that cancelling fishing jobs costs elections,
and the biological fact of a depleted deep,
public officials tend to acknowledge harm
done by other nations, denying harm done by
their own. Thus the object of fish treaties,
time and again, becomes not conservation but
rather grabbing the most of what fish are left.

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Clear NMFS of buyers and sellers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

by Carroll Cox, special investigator, Friends of Animals

Entrusted with the duty of protecting marine life in
U.S. waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service is at the
same time a division of the Department of Commerce, mandated
to promote trade. This builds into NMFS a conflict of interest
similar to that within the USDA between the mandate to
promote agriculture, the first function of the agency, and the
duty to safeguard public health and animal welfare.
The much better known conflict of interest within the
USDA was subject of a 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose
series by the Kansas City Star, and of an expose by Marian
Burros, food editor of The New York Times, as recently as
April 9 of this year. Between exposes, at least 45,500
Americans died of food-borne diseases, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the clout of
the meat, egg, and milk industries within the USDA,
Congress, and the White House is such that nothing has been
done to separate the functions of promotion and inspection.

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USFWS’ albatross

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

MIDWAY––If anyone wants a courtroom Second
Battle of Midway, the short-tailed albatross could become a
mighty obstacle to tourism development. Owned by the U.S.
Navy since 1903, Midway was deeded over to the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service on April 5, which intends to open the
newly created refuge to the public soon, for the first time
since before World War II.
The problem isn’t that the uniquely all-white shorttailed
albatross is on the Endangered Species List: it’s that it
isn’t. Because it isn’t, critical habitat has not been designated.
Yet the short-tailed albatross drew protection from Japan
more than 60 years ago, when the population dipped to just
100, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has treated the
short-tailed albatross as endangered since 1969, four years
before the present Endangered Species Act was passed.

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